John Roberts: Switch hitter?
conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care
reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed
an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two
sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.
Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to
his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy -
believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote
for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.
"He was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very
engaged in this."
But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their
own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're
on your own."
The Atlanta-based federal appeals court said Congress didn't have that kind
of expansive power, and it struck down the mandate as unconstitutional.
On this point - Congress' commerce power - Roberts agreed. In the court's
private conference immediately after the arguments, he was aligned with the four
conservatives to strike down the mandate.
Roberts was less clear on whether that also meant the rest of the law must
fall, the source said. The other four conservatives believed that the mandate
could not be lopped off from the rest of the law and that, since one key part
was unconstitutional, the entire law must be struck down.
Because Roberts was the most senior justice in the majority to strike down
the mandate, he got to choose which justice would write the court's historic
decision. He kept it for himself.
Read More: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57464549/robe...
If Romney plays it right, Justice Roberts just handed Romney the presidency.
The Health Care issue now remains on the table, and more than 60% of voters and doctors are against ACA. If they vote on that issue alone, forgetting the president's failure on the economy, Obama will lose in November.
What's more, the Supreme Court declared the Individual Mandate to be a tax, which was the government's defense of the law after the government and Obama assured us many times that it was not a tax. It will be the largest tax increase for the middle class in the history of the United States, undermining Obama's claim that he is the protector of the middle class. If the so-called penalty had been proposed as a tax originally, many Democrats probably would not have voted for the Health Care bill to begin with. Americans have now been subject to a fraud unprecedented in our history, and many of us, including liberals, know it. (My best friend and family are liberals.. and they are even more angry than I am. They feel embarrassed.)
This will not be a victory for the Democratic Party in the long run. It is an issue that has awakened and motivated every conservative and independent in the country; and unless the Democrat...
If Romney plays it right, Justice Roberts just handed Romney the presidency.
The Health Care issue now remains on the table, and more than 60% of voters and doctors are against ACA. If they vote on that issue alone, forgetting the president's failure on the economy, Obama will lose in November.
What's more, the Supreme Court declared the Individual Mandate to be a tax, which was the government's defense of the law after the government and Obama assured us many times that it was not a tax. It will be the largest tax increase for the middle class in the history of the United States, undermining Obama's claim that he is the protector of the middle class. If the so-called penalty had been proposed as a tax originally, many Democrats probably would not have voted for the Health Care bill to begin with. Americans have now been subject to a fraud unprecedented in our history, and many of us, including liberals, know it. (My best friend and family are liberals.. and they are even more angry than I am. They feel embarrassed.)
This will not be a victory for the Democratic Party in the long run. It is an issue that has awakened and motivated every conservative and independent in the country; and unless the Democrats, themselves, address that issue, it will be instrumental in defeating them in November.
Even more important, since the government lawyers could not argue that the threat to penalize states who wished to opt out of Medicaid expansion was a tax (the government cannot tax states), every state, if it wants can now eliminate all Medicaid entirely (including the 15 million newcomers) to balance their budgets, thus thrusting the burden of all Medicaid on the federal government. Who do you think is going to have to pay for that and the extra 30 million people estimated to be eligible? It would result in another hefty federal tax increase on all of us.
Justice Robert's should be criticized for his decision in that it was innately political, but not as most of you think. This guy is a genius... and as Romney said: The only way to avoid the horrendous tax increases is to get rid of (or at least modify) the Health Care law... and the only way to do that is to get rid of Obama.
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However, it is our job, if there is a Republican Congress, to keep them in check as well.
I am not a great fan of Romney, and it is questionable whether or not he can save this country from bankruptcy; but it is a sure thing that Obama cannot.